


hail brittania

by sonatine



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Annie, background Troy/Abed, the homosexual bildungsroman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27899800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonatine/pseuds/sonatine
Summary: She and Abed help the dean pack his office. It’s a job too manual labor-y for Jeff, and Shirley has enough to do closing the sandwich shop. The dean snivels pitifully. At first Annie’s kind of repulsed. Like get a grip: it’s a job and you’re a middle aged man. But then, she’s been moping around like a specter for the last couple of weeks over a girl she made out with a couple of times, so who is she to judge?
Relationships: Annie Edison/Britta Perry
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49





	hail brittania

Annie has learned not to barge into the bathrooms on campus. It’s a process. You jiggle the doorknob to give any occupants inside time to hear. Then you push the door open with your elbow, slowly, because this school is filthy and avoiding germs is an emotional minefield. But also to give anyone inside who’s too stupid to pay attention to other people time to spring apart. 

But Britta isn’t especially known for awareness of her surroundings.

She and a pretty redhead with excellent cheekbones spring apart. 

Annie says, “What the _hell_?” and for her outburst is treated to Britta assuming the lecture position.

The redhead fixes her lipgloss. Britta fixes her shirt. Annie fixes any preconceived notions she had about Britta in her head.

Britta says, “Okay. First of all, we’re doing nothing wrong —”

“Oh really? So this isn’t the girl Abed’s interested in?”

Britta’s expression morphs from righteous indignation into guilt. The pretty girl frowns and signs, _I’m not an object._

Annie hasn’t been an overachiever for 24 years for nothing. In high school she needed one more club to pad the Extracurriculars section of her resume, and everything except the Subtitle Film Society was full. Now she knows enough ASL carry on a competent conversation and enough of Tarantino’s filmography to know he should be on the FBI watchlist. She responds, _I didn’t mean that_. 

Britta’s reaction to Annie signing is interesting enough to salvage this trainwreck of an interaction. Annie wants to focus on that, because Britta's mouth is hanging open (two points for Annie in Britta Bingo! That bumps her above Shirley) but the pretty girl grabs Annie’s pride and crushes it between her hands. 

_You didn’t ask me if I liked him back. I don’t like men. I can’t control if they like me or not._

Annie’s ASL vocabulary has hit a wall. “But… you were leading him on. Abed’s a good guy. You don’t have to date him, but don’t you at least owe him not to make out with his friend the same night?”

Britta and the pretty girl exchange a look. It’s the ‘oof, she’s so naive look’ which to Annie is like an unplanned pregnancy stress dream.

The pretty girl moves to the exit, patting Annie’s shoulder and saying, _It’s not mean to say you don’t like someone._

This has literally never occurred to Annie before. 

The pretty girl winks at Britta. The door swings behind her with an audible squeak.

“You didn’t even hear _that_ when I came in?” Annie says. Unbelievable.

_last year_

Troy is staring daggers at Annie when she makes it into the study room. This isn’t unexpected, since she used up the last of marshmallow cereal that morning — but the lasers coming from Britta’s eyes _are_. 

Annie breezes past this. May graduation is fast approaching, which means: 

“So is the deadline to apply for a float in the Gasparilla Parade next year.”

“Gasparilla?” says Shirley. 

“Next _year_?” says Jeff. 

“Yes, Jeff, you have to get your applications in 9 months early, everyone knows that. And as this is something I’ve been pitching to the group for five years, this is our last chance to get in before we literally all graduate.” She tosses her _Gasparilla Application_ binder onto the table. Jeff’s eyes bug out. She assumes because of the way it’s decorated — it’s not any thicker than usual. “I’ll need a firm headcount by noon if you want any hope of having a decent costume.”

“And by ‘decent’, I assume you mean ‘deeply embarrassing’?” says Pierce. 

Britta crosses her arms. “This from the man who thinks _baths_ are humiliating.”

“Lying on your back is a female thing,” says Pierce. “Everyone knows that.”

Before the room can explode into an indignant backlash, the dean comes sprinting into the study room. He doubles over, hands on knees, breathing heavily. 

“Dean,” Annie asks, “did you run here?”

“I have an alarm rigged to go off anytime someone says the word ‘costume’ on campus,” he says brightly. “I’m so glad it turned out to be you guys! This room is much closer to my office than the gym.”

“Is that legal?” asks Britta. 

“Maybe! We get a government subsidy for it. How do you think I fund all these dances?” He says the last bit out of the corner of his mouth, smoothing non-existent wrinkles out of his Dwight Schrute shirt. Jeff twitches only slightly when the dean settles in the chair beside him. 

Abed leans in, avidly. “Can you track the word ‘impossible’? Troy and I have a new year’s resolution to meet a timer traveler.”

“And we’re halfway through the year,” Troy laments. Abed pats his shoulder. 

“It is _now_ ,” Annie interrupts, standing to get everyone’s attention, “eleven a.m. I am passing around this sign up sheet. Initial at the bottom of the contact stapled to the back. Pierce, if you initial _A-S-S_ I will have Gilbert poison your protein shakes. We’re in the same book club now.” 

She puts her hands on her hips for emphasis. Jeff’s gaze flicks to her bra line. So does Britta’s, after narrowing her eyes at Jeff. 

She brings it home with the teacher finger point. “Twelve noon, people. Let’s end our college career with a bang. Fortune favors the prepared!”

“That’s not how that quote goes!” Abed yells after her as she sashays out of the study room. “Annie? That’s not— Troy, it’s not—” as Troy makes soothing sounds, like you would to a skittish horse. 

#

Britta finds her after fifth period. Annie’s staked out the couch since lunch, which means she desperately has to pee, but the only other available seats in the common area are by the football table (too many guys looking up her skirt) and the broken chair by the window that creaks like an old mattress. 

“Hey.” Britta vaults over the back of the couch. “I’m going to watch the debates tonight at Surley’s bar on Third. Want to come?”

“Britta, it’s May.”

“The Serbian parliamentary debates.” 

Britta swipes a compact from Annie’s backpack. She applies a lipstick that’s too dark for the day. Annie never wears any shade darker than medium pink for fear of looking too trampy. She’s always envied Britta’s casual boho vampire vibe. Britta’s tall and willowy in a way that means she can pull off a t-shirt-leggings-no makeup look that would make Annie look like she were going to bed. 

“What’s this?” Britta plucks at a form entitled _FBI INTERNSHIP APPLICATION 2015-2016._ “Isn’t this a little early to be applying for stuff?”

“Guess Langley and Gasparilla are as Type A as me.” Annie snatches the paper back. “You have to apply a year early. They have three rounds of interviews and need character witnesses. It’s a process.”

“Jesus.”

Only an atheist can properly pull off this swear. Annie sounds like a kid in Hebrew school trying too hard to sound cool. Britta snaps the paper tight. Hands it back to Annie. “Are you doing this because you want to or because you think you have to?”

Annie stiffens. “Of course I want to!”

Britta holds up her hands. She sinks back into the couch and props her head on an elbow: regarding Annie leisurely. 

Jeff’s wrong to think he’s the only lawyer at Greendale.

Annie folds the paper in half, crisply, and slides it into her backpack between her science folder and history notebook. “Fine. Out with it. What are you implying?”

“Only that this is something old Annie would do because a) she thinks it’s impressive or b) she thinks it’s what people would expect.”

“How about c) it’ll help her get into a good master’s program?”

“That’s definitely the old Annie talking.”

Annie bolts to her feet. Her ballet flats slip a little; the soles are wearing thin, but she can’t afford new ones right now. “I don’t know where you’re drawing the line of delineation between my old self and new self, but you don’t know me.”

“No, that’s for Socrates to say,” Britta say, and Annie doesn’t know if she’s being dumb, facetious, or maybe both. 

Annie stalks out of the common area flipping Britta the bird over her shoulder. 

“Now _there’s_ the Annie we know and love!”

#

In the end, the whole study group (and Chang, whom no one could manage to dissuade) signs up for the Gasparilla float. Abed likes the idea of a season finale, and Troy, though less than enthusiastic about the cheesiness of the affair, likes the idea of costumes outside the Dreamatorium and would no sooner diminish Abed’s happiness than he would eat raw broccoli. Shirley apparently has a closet full of pirate-themed gear (“What my ex-husband and I got up to during our marriage is nobody’s business but myself and God’s”) and Jeff is predictably disdainful. He lands a couple of one-two zinger combos until Shirley is snorting into her travel coffee mug, which is the bar by which he measures himself successful. He grins and crosses his arms in a way that he knows makes them flex. 

Britta rolls her eyes. Annie doesn’t blame her. Jeff has been overdoing it on exercise lately — Shirley has forbidden her from bringing it up, because apparently Greendale’s teacher health insurance does not cover therapy and this seems to be supplementing — and his pecs are nearly bursting out of his shirt. It’s kind of gross. It’s fine for men to be muscly, but this is overkill. 

Maybe it’s because Britta has been muttering under her breath in a steady stream of disabusing gender stereotypes, but Annie has a pang of doubt. Should she be thinking of men as gross? That’s mean; she’s not being inclusive of all body types. 

But it’s not like anyone else is ragging on Jeff for getting “too swole”, so maybe she’s not being mean. Maybe it’s okay to admit she doesn’t like super muscly dudes! She’s never been into really masculine men, anyway. She definitely preferred Troy over Jeff — though Troy turned out to be what Britta insists is _bisexual_ , even though everyone else is calling him gay for kissing Abed in the hallway. 

Troy just doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Annie wishes she could be that way. Try as she might to divest herself of the opinion of her parents, the dean, Michelle Obama, and every other girl inspecting themselves in the Greendale bathroom mirrors, she just can’t seem to.

_this year_

Annie does _not_ mention to Abed that she caught Britta sucking face with his crush. She has a whole night of anxiety sweats over being a bad roommate, and the next day resolves to say something. True friendship is breaking bad news, even if it could hurt another friend. Annie is a strict believer in moral hierarchy (“This is what makes playing D&D with you so excruciating,” Jeff has said, many times). Britta did the original bad deed: so any comeuppance Annie causes can be linked back to Britta. She supposes this makes Britta Eve. 

An image of Britta in only fig leaves forces its way into Annie’s mind. She’s annoyed that the image then shapes into the Venus in a seashell painting that her art history class covered last week (a million horrible catcalls from men; but Annie Kim staring point-black in a way that was… interesting). 

Like _obviously_ she’s noticed Britta’s rack in a vest. Or when they were mud wrestling. Or when Britta crashed at Annie’s after the Blade debacle. She fell into the deep sleep of emotional whiplash on top of Annie’s bed, still dressed. 

It takes a locker slamming into Annie’s face to snap out of it. She doubles over, clutching her nose.

“I’m sorry,” Abed says. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Smooth move, killing your friend,” says a female voice.

Eyes streaming, Annie straightens. Her nose isn’t bleeding, but it feels like her heartbeat has crawled up to her face. Around the throbbing, she notices two things: that Abed is holding hands with this female person, and that she is definitely _not_ the cute girl she caught macking on Britta. 

“You should go to the nurse’s,” Abed says. 

“You think?” Annie says, and uses this excuse to huff off. Saved! He’s moved on! She’s no longer morally complicit! Aside from breaking her nose, it’s turning out to be a red-letter day.

There’s a line at the infirmary. It seems that several fights (fist, water balloon, and food) have taken place already this morning. She wants to sit, but the only free seat is between two dudes who are both staring at her boobs. 

“Hey,” someone calls from the corner. 

Annie scampers over. Britta is slouched in a half-broken chair behind the fake plant. Her head is leaned against the wall, her eyes closed. She looks exhausted. 

“Can I sit? My legs feel weak. I got punched in the face.”

“You did not.”

“Okay, I didn’t, but I _am_ emotionally scarred and also on my period, so I’m achy. Please, Britta?”

“Oh my god. Just sit on my lap.”

Annie’s glad Britta’s eyes are closed, because she can feel heat rising to her cheeks. Her stupid brain is flashing back to fog leaves. She perches primly across Britta’s knees; it’s only gay if you lean in and cuddle. 

Britta cracks one eye open. “What did happen to you?”

Annie considers inventing a cool story for like a second, but everything comes tumbling out. It’s _Britta_. How funny that three years ago Annie hero-worshipped her, then briefly hated her, was insanely jealous, then somehow she morphed into a sister, then confidante, and now quasi therapist that Annie isn’t afraid to spill her darkest guts to. Maybe because Britta’s so messed up herself that Annie never feels too bad about herself. 

“Jesus,” Britta says. “Glad I don’t have access into your brain. Sounds uber stressful.”

Annie wheeze-laughs. There’s nothing like hearing Britta use exclusively ten-year-old slang with complete seriousness. Jeff says it’s because her pop culture references froze when she left high school. Abed just thinks she’s a troll.

Britta prods at Annie’s nose with a knuckle. “Does this hurt?”

“Yes!”

“How about now?”

“Would you leave medicine to the practitioners?”

Britta smiles smugly and settles back against the wall. She crosses her arms, seemingly falling asleep. 

Annie shivers. The AC is on high blast. And the feel of being in the doctor’s office makes her feel like a scared kid again. She says, only half joking, “Kiss it better?”

Britta leans forward and presses a kiss to the corner of Annie’s mouth. 

Heart beat. Pulse spike. “You missed.”

“It wasn’t your nose annoying me just now.”

_last year_

Britta, it turns out, goes to a _real_ therapist that comes by the infirmary once a month for some pro bono work funded through a state-run suicide prevention non-profit. Annie, no stranger to counseling, _is_ surprised to find that Britta’s keeping it a secret. 

“You know the group,” Britta mumbles, winding her backpack strap around her wrist. “They blow everything out of proportion.” 

“You’re getting a _degree_ in psychology!”

“So? I can’t have one thing that’s private? Even if Subway—” Britta bites her lip. 

Annie’s always been impressed (and sometimes concerned) about how intensely Britta feels things. She once caught Britta sobbing in the bathroom after a guy she went on two dates with said ‘You’re cool, but I think we want different things.’ Annie incredulously patted Britta’s back and fixed her eyeliner. Annie’s had men leak her nudes, tell her she kisses like a grandma, wreck her car and yell at her for not servicing it properly and she cut them off without a tear shed. She didn’t even cry like this over Vaughn, and that was her longest relationship. She blames her parents: grades and self-worth always came first in their house. She got the feeling Britta’s hippie parents were a bit more bent on…. emotions. 

“Whatever,” says Beitta, hitching her backpack up tighter, “I’m not ashamed of it.”

Annie fizzles, “Nor should you be!” but every time the first of the month rolls around, she finds herself urgently needed in the library, or too tired between classes, or desperately needing to intervene in some group drama. 

It’s not that she doesn’t think therapy would be useful. She just doesn’t know where to start. And she’s afraid of what all might come tumbling out if she _does_ start. Last month Troy threw a fit and insisted he should be able to choose a movie night selection once a month that _nobody but him_ liked. Abed was wary of this idea — their current roommate agreement stipulates that everyone picks for roommate movie night on a rotating basis, _as long as_ it’s a film everyone is at least moderately interested in. 

“Think of it this way,” said Abed, using the pointer he stole from the choir room after Mr. Rad was arrested to gesture to a line graph on the whiteboard on the fridge. “Not everyone has to love your pick. We don’t need a 100% consensus. Your feelings toward the film just have to be at or past the midway point.”

Annie said, “So a 3/4 majority rule.” 

Troy said at the same time, “So we need to be at least bisexual about it.”

Annie and Abed paused, then turned toward him in unison. 

“Britta’s been teaching me about the Kinsey scale,” Troy explained. “Abed, you’re saying that for movie night, we all need to feel a 3 or higher toward the pick.”

“That’s not… totally incorrect,” Abed allowed. 

Troy celebrated his cerebral victory by picking a Japanese animated movie that he claimed was “not anime”, which was too metaphorical for Abed to gravitate toward normally and felt too weeby for Annie to ever admit to trying. But she related to the young girl that loses her parents and is on her own too young. The scene that really stuck with her was a mud monster of some kind that turned out to be the spirit of a polluted river (“Oh my god, Britta would love this,” she said, while Abed hissed, “Roommate Movie Night Amendment #4: thou shalt not speak during the first viewing of yon film”), who was saved from their cursed form by yanking out a fish hook. Annie shrieked as slime came gushing out of the river spirit’s body, but felt something akin to panic. 

That’s what therapy would feel like. Pull one little fishing hook out, and then the rest of your childhood comes barreling up.

Who knows what else might slip out?

#

Her return to Greendale is turning over a new leaf. It’s Freshman Year 2.0, except she’s now jaded instead of naive, and her tuition is coming entirely out of her pocket and not from parental funds. Annie’s 26. That’s functionally an adult. She has friends who are _married_ . With _babies._ And _houses._ Annie still lives with two roommates and only filters <$20 when shopping online. But she knows she _cannot_ go back to being a drug rep, which gives her the illusion of security. The stakes are only high when there’s even a option of failure. She can’t fail, so this has to work. 

18 months to fulfill the requirements for a forensics degree. Then it’s a practical internship, or entry level position somewhere. Anywhere. (Hopefully still in Colorado, but she’s not thinking about that part now.) After a yearlong trial by fire of cancelled movie nights and missed coffee dates and trying to find common meeting ground that _isn’t_ Greendale when all of them live upwards of 45 minutes away from each other (and only half have working vehicles), they’re back. Her group is back. Jeff is less manic as a teacher. Troy and Abed are happily, if warily, dating. The dean has her stop by for afternoon tea twice a week. She’s finally going to be in the Gasparilla parade, which her parents refused to let her even see with supervision as a child. “It’s vile,” her mother would sniff. “Drunks and degenerates flailing about.” (Read: gays and other such ilk.) Her grades are good. She likes her course. She’s moved from Dildopolis to a decent apartment with decent roommates in a decent neighborhood. She’s on track. 

#

“But what’s the track list?” Troy insists. “You can’t expect us to commit to standing on a moving target for three hours with music we’ll hate.”

“Actually, I think floats stand still half the time,” says Abed. “Despite the name.”

“Yes. Thank you, Abed. Annie, how can you expect us to commit to standing on an _immobile_ target for three hours with music we hate?”

Jeff leans toward Britta, whispering, “When did Troy learn the word ‘immobile’?”

Britta whispers back, “Why is everyone so obsessed with this fake pirate float?”

Annie wishes she had someone to whisper to; but like usual, she is in charge and standing. An hour and thirty minutes later they are all finally decided on a track list (abandoning “thematic”, to Pierce’s fury, and settling on “ironic” to Shirley’s eye rolling acceptance). They’ve missed lunch, but Annie doesn’t mind rushing to class. It means she doesn’t have to walk behind a bickering Jeff and Britta like a lost child, third wheel, or loose balloon. 

She notices immediately uptown walking into art history that she and Annie Kim are wearing the same cardigan. Annie stormily sits next to her — it’s not even an alphabetical seating class, they both just believe in keeping your friends, enemies, and any other kind of rival close enough to monitor acutely — and tries to figure out why it looks better. Annie Kim has got the top half unbuttoned. Should Annie do the same? After class, at least, so she won’t look like a copycat. 

Annie Kim catches Annie blatantly staring at her rack. Annie jerks her head forward, cheeks burning. If this were high school, this would be a fatal misstep. She’d be reported to the principal for “making people feel uncomfortable” or “trying to sabotage the salutatorian with mind-fuck games.” All hypothetical examples of course. 

It’s fine. It’s fine. She has Jeff now. Even reformed I’m-an- _educator_ -now-Jeff still has a deep seeded passion for arguing a pointless cause. It’ll tide him over past the holidays. 

But out of the corner of her eye, she sees Annie Kim preen. Adjusts her cardigan smugly, so it showcases her assets better. Shameless. 

#

Jeff tells Britta about Annie’s sexy santa routine when they all collectively lost their minds about glee club, which, whatever, apparently the statute of limitations on embarrassing friend stuff doesn’t apply to people with an on again off again Sam-and-Diane nonsense. 

Britta claims she’s foraging in Annie’s closet for a pair of old shoes to wear during the water balloon fight with Abed and Shirley in the parking lot, but Annie doesn’t buy it. One, Britta knows good and well that Annie has flat feet (embarrassing) and has to throw shoes away as the soles get mildly thin. Two, Britta is clutching the santa outfit Annie stole from Mr. Rad to her chest.

“Will you recreate the moment for me? Pleeeeease? Come on, please? You’re such a button down cardigan girl.”

Annie snatches the costume out of her hands. “Meaning I’m frumpy?”

“No, you’ll be frumpy at forty. Right now you’re just uptight.”

Annie throws the dress at Britta’s face and stalks out. It’s nothing she hasn’t heard before, but it still stings. _All business. Stick up her ass. Like a teacher._ She’s never had the easy sex appeal that oozes off people like Britta.

Annie changes into her pajamas and wraps herself entirely in a blanket in the armchair, turning the TV to whatever’s on. Troy and Abed are still in their water balloon campaign. Britta can let herself the hell out.

Her bedroom door opens. Britta walks out with the costume on. She’s got Ugg’s on her feet, but clearly nothing else beneath. She catwalks over to pose in front of Annie, arms thrown over her head, chin tilted back, eyes half closed. For a minute Annie can’t breathe: in both rage and confusion. She expects Britta to school her in what a real lap dance looks like (rules for girls who don’t want to be mistaken for lesbians: look, but don’t look too much; smile but pretend it’s a joke and you’re not enjoying it), but then the pose drops. Britta laughs — her honking bellow — and drops into the chair beside Annie. She crosses her legs and wraps the afghan Troy crocheted around her shoulders. 

“I’m sorry,” Britta says. “Old habits die hard. You ever wonder why we’re taught to shame each other for either being too sexual or not sexual enough? Can’t win.”

“That’s the point of the patriarchy,” says Annie. “Power and control.”

Britta’s face lights up. “You _have_ been listening to me!” She throws an arm around Annie’s shoulders and musses up her hair. Annie grumbles, “Hard not to,” and pretends to push her away. 

Britta slings her legs across Annie’s lap and burrows into the couch. It was a Craigslist find that is the closest modern day equivalent to quicksand. Britta’s ears and most of her face have disappeared into the cushions. “See if you can find _Adventure Time_ ,” her voice comes floating up.

Annie flips through the Roku they signed up with Pierce’s credit card details. He claims their study group as a tax write off anyway (“charity case volunteer crap”). Britta dozes off within minutes, the afternoon sun slanting across her face. Annie thinks that if this were a Netflix and chill with a man, this would be the part where she’d have to resign herself to having sex and missing half the plotline. It’s nice to not steel herself for either. 

#

Just when Annie thinks things are nominally moving in the right direction, the train jumps the fucking rails. 

Pierce dies. He dies. He was a dick and the last thing Annie said to him was, “Pierce, when are you going to finally grow the fuck up?” Troy, ashen, will not tell her the last thing he said to Pierce — which evidently couldn’t have been all that bad, because he leaves Troy a fucking _yacht_ . Abed is bleak about the prospect of spending a couple of years apart (“I’ve seen enough cinema to know how this story ends”), and staunchly refuses to go long distance. “I’d rather break up now and get back together than have some awful three-point-five minute phone call twelve time zones apart where we decide never to speak to each other again.” Troy can’t persuade him any other way. _Annie_ can’t persuade him any other way, which is how they know he’s serious. 

Troy leaves. The group flounders. Annie quietly pulls their Gasparilla application. She doesn’t even consult the others. 

Nobody remembers anyway. 

  
  


_the day after_

Annie can’t make eye contact with Britta in _the_ bathroom anymore. She’s trying to stealthily use the sample bottle of dry shampoo Annie Kim loaned her (Annie is not blessed with the type of hair that can put off washing for three days. By evening it looks like she’s been trapped in Donner Pass) while Britta applies lipstick two sinks over. They haven’t spoken since Annie walked in on her. Is Britta embarrassed? Does she think Annie is homophobic? Annie doesn’t know how to reassure her that she’s not without sounding too defensive. 

Annie smooths her hair. Clears her throat. Glances at Britta to see if she’s looking — she is — and when the bathroom finally empties out, turns to face her fears. 

“Listen —”

Britta whirls. “Why did you tank me like that in history?”

“Uh.” Annie’s brain scrabbles backward like a rewinding cassette tape. “Wait, what?”

“So I don’t have the exact date of every coup memorized, so sue me. But I was _right_ about that tyrant having a secret mistress.”

Annie vaguely remembers making some comment this morning about an incorrect fact Britta had gone off on. As it hadn’t felt different than any other day, i.e. everyone ragging on Britta for something dumb she said, she didn’t remark on it. But now, watching Britta tremble in rage in front of her, Annie wonders just how long Britta has been silently tapping down this rage at ‘i.e. everyone ragging on her for something dumb she said’.

Has Annie become one of those bullies she hated in high school? In horror, she sees her reflection in the mirror: pretty now, finally well dressed, and making a less cool girl cry in the bathroom. 

She’s come full circle. 

“Britta,” she says, for once meaning it, “I am so sorry. I didn’t realize.”

Britta sniffs. She deflates a little, shrugs, and adjusts her leather jacket: navy, distressed elbows. “Eh, it’s fine. Just lay off in the future, okay? We can’t all be mini Einsteins.”

The cassette tape is now unraveling inside Annie’s mind. “So you’re not — you don’t — I didn’t — I mean, it’s cool if — ”

“Are you having a stroke?”

“Do you want to talk about me walking in on you with that girl?” Annie blurts.

Britta gives her a look. “You can save the lecture. I apologized to Abed. He’s already dating someone else, but he said it was nice to hear sorry anyway.” She hums and pulls her hair up into a ponytail. “Out of all of us, he should be the one to become a therapist.”

It’s really now or never. “But I mean: me walking in on you.”

“Psh. Not the first time you’ve done that. Probably the last. I’ve done a lot of things in this bathroom.”

“Ew,” says Annie.

Britta pats her shoulder in passing. “Maybe you should try girls sometime. I’ve never heard you say _ew_ about a girl.” 

And that’s when the cassette tapes shatters. 

#

Jeff corners Annie in the hallway, sidling up in that Aaron Sorkin way he does that must’ve taken decades to perfect. “So I was thinking…”

“Well _don’t_ ,” Annie snaps.

Slamming her locker doesn’t make her feel better. Nor does running into Abed around the corner. He’s got one finger pointed up and a quizzical expression on his face that means he’s just seen her lose it on Jeff. 

“Jeff was just going to suggest we register for the Gasparilla parade again this year,” he says apprehensively. “For real.” 

Annie stalks off to the parking lot. Abed follows. She pretends she hasn’t forgotten that it’s Tuesday and they’re carpooling today. “What does it matter? Everything’s different now.”

Abed tilts his head. “Isn’t that all the more reason to do it?”

He doesn’t say anything as she floors it all the way home, the transmission of her car grinding in a worrying way. He doesn’t say anything when she throws her book bag on her bed, something she normally refuses to do in fear of getting Greendale germs all over the place where she sleeps. He does say something, finally, when she drains the pasta so quickly that the steam hisses in the sink: something _he_ fears. 

“Did I make a mistake bringing up the Gasparilla parade?”

“Abed, I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Is this a classic Annie situation where you feel like you _have_ to do something? Do you even like the parade?”

She slams the colander onto the counter. Pasta skitters everywhere. 

“ _Yes_! I’ve been looking forward to this for _five_ _years_! I know it’s lame! But it’s also fun! You get to dress up and act crazy and—” She gulps. 

Abed’s eyebrows shoot up. 

Annie smooths down her hair. Readjusts her cardigan. “How did you know you liked Troy? I mean, like _that.”_

“I just did.”

Abed doesn’t move from his place by the fridge. It’s because he’s trapped by soggy pasta, which he hates in both feel and appearance if it’s not covered in sauce. Annie knows this. It’s only because he can’t run away that she takes her time. 

Annie says, “I think I’m gay?”

“Yeah, I know,” Abed says. “When you said in the Dreamtorium that you pushed Britta and Troy together because you were following some kind of script.”

“...What?”

“Well, that was a tip-off because I used to do the same thing. That’s why it took four years for me and Troy to get together, because I didn’t have the script for it. But Troy helped me write one, and then it was pretty downhill from there.”

“ _What?”_

“You said yourself that you don’t really love Jeff, you just love the idea of love. I’m quoting you, by the way, not paraphrasing. It happened on a Tuesday at 12:30pm, you were wearing a yellow dress—”

“Abed, okay!”

Annie covers her face. Abed’s looking at her the way he does sometimes, like a specimen under a microscope. The fact that he looks sympathetic doesn’t help. 

They both look at the Zac Efron poster prominently displayed on Annie’s bedroom wall. Jeff did look a lot like him. Clean cut, brown-blonde hair, light eyes. Just like Vaughn, really. And Rich. But she brought that poster from home! It was a piece of her childhood.

Though actually, she’d put that poster up after taking down a _Bring It On_ poster. She’d thought it was cool, but a friend had remarked one time, “It’s funny you don’t have any guys on your wall.” Annie had, in shame, taken it down the next day. She’d thought the cheerleader poster was cool — not that she’d know, she tried out for cheerleading three years in a row and never made the JV team — but now she felt abashed and ashamed at such a rookie mistake. Zac had gone up as soon as she persuaded her mother to drive her to Michael’s. As a crafts store, it had limited selection of posters, but her parents would only let her go to the mall on weekends and her friend Carrie was coming over the next day. This was an emergency. The choice was between Mr. Efron himself and an outdated Josh Hartnett poster. Annie had already made a mistake once. She grabbed the Zac poster and marched up to the counter. The teenage girl working the register glanced down. Annie tensed. The girl said, “He is _so hot_ , right?” Annie blinked; then like a code, replied, “So hot.” The girl smiled. Annie smiled. She was in. 

“Are you afraid of disappointing people?” Abed asks. “I don’t think any of us care. Your parents might, if they’re conservative. My dad cares. It was hard telling him. He’s pretending he doesn’t know right now. I give him a couple years to come around.”

Annie nods, throat tight.

“Now will you _please_ ,” says Abed, “clean up this pasta?”

#

They end up ordering pizza and eating on Annie’s bed, watching movies on Abed’s laptop instead of the TV. He claims it’s sacrilegious to eat noodles on a bed in front of a computer, but Annie says it’s basically the same setup as a couch and TV, just a different variation. He has to think about this for a minute, but agrees it’s a logical argument. 

“It’s something Troy would say,” Abed says. 

Annie turns her head. She’s wrapped so tightly in her blanket it’s the most movement she’s capable of. “Do you miss him?”

Abed stares at the screen, chewing meditatively. “Every day.”

“But you’re dating something else.” She tries not to sound accusatory.

“For market research. Troy’s doing the same. When he gets back we’ll compare results and then do a postmortem.” 

“That sounds… logical.”

Abed shoots her small smile. “When have you known me to be anything else, Captain Kirk?”

#

Annie takes extra care getting dressed the next morning. She doesn’t pretend to not know why. She’s spent so long hiding from herself that in the end has become really excellent at knowing _exactly_ what she wants: by process of elimination. It’s convoluted, but effective. 

She hears Abed’s voice in her head, _When have you been anything else, Captain?_ and smiles to herself. She smiles all the way to the ladies’ room in hallway C where Britta is putting on last-minute eyeliner like she does every Wednesday morning before their crazy early 8:30am lecture.

“Hey,” she says, shaking the eyeliner tube. “Do you have any mascara in your bag? Mine is all dried— mmmph.”

It’s not Annie’s most elegant kiss. But it has shocked Britta into slack-jawed silence, which Annie feels is a victory. Britta’s expression then transforms into awe, and admiration. 

“Cool,” she says. “I didn’t think you had it in you.” 

#

They see a lot of bathrooms in the next few weeks. And broom closets. And the inside of Annie’s car. It’s getting to the point where Annie can’t open a door to a small space without getting turned on.

“It’s _so_ hot,” Annie gushes to Abed on the way home, in the library, by the soda machines, in line at the movie theater. 

“Please stop telling me this,” says Abed. 

The problem is, that’s _all_ they’re doing. Britta has never been big on PDA, but Annie thought, you know, she’d at least want to hold hands in the hallway. 

“It’s just so much more fun this way,” Britta grins, pulling Annie into the handicapped stall.

“Kissing girls is so much better than kissing guys!” Annie tells Shirley. “It finally makes sense! I thought everyone was just making a big deal out of nothing!”

“Annieee, that’s wonderful,” says Shirley. Her smile looks a little plastered on, but she is being supportive. At least she hasn’t put any photocopies of the Bible into Annie’s locker like she did when Troy and Abed announced they were dating. Baby steps. “So are you and Britt-ah an item now?”

“Oh! No. No no no. It’s just casual, you know? Cool. Chill. Supes cazh. You know how it is.”

“Uh… huh.” Shirley gives her a concerned look and loops her arm through Annie’s. 

“I’m not sure I can make it to dinner tomorrow,” Annie says later in the study room when Jeff suggests a group outing. “Because— well, you know!”

“Uh.” Jeff is distracted by his phone. “No, I don’t know. You got something going on tomorrow?”

Annie shoots Britta a look. Britta shakes her head minutely, eyes wide. “Oh just — Britta and I are going to the movies tomorrow?”

“Oh yeah?” Jeff grins. “Girls’ night out? You gonna gossip about boys?”

Both Abed and Shirley snort. But Annie has frozen inside. From the way Jeff says this, she knows for an absolute fact that Jeff is the only person in the study group who Britta has _not_ told about making out with Annie in every available space on campus. For god’s sake, even _Hickey_ had to withstand a recital about Annie’s top ten bra colors the week before. 

But Britta deliberately kept Jeff out of the loop.

Annie, locked in a staring contest with Britta, does not want to think about why. There are only two explanations for this. One: Britta is embarrassed. Given how many people Britta bragged to about Annie being one of the “top ten hotties she’s played tonsil hockey with”, Annie doubts this is the case. Which leaves option two: Britta is still interested in Jeff and doesn’t want to ruin her chances of them getting back together someday. 

The hickey Annie gave Britta just this morning is visible above the turned up collar of her leather jacket. 

Annie says past the lump in her throat, “Something like that.” 

#

It’s her fault, really, for assuming the first girl she kissed to want to be in a relationship and move in together and get married or whatever. Maybe Annie still is naive. Back in freshman year, back to freshman mentality. How humiliating. It’s like her dumb fake crush on Jeff all over again. 

Of course Britta’s not interested in dating Annie. She’s too young; too inexperienced; a lesbian virgin. Britta probably wants someone who knows what they’re doing. 

Annie resolves to talk to Britta about all of this. In depth! Over milkshakes — no, _cocktails_ — they can spill all their feelings. Like grown ups.

But then they’re at an experimental theater show and Britta acts like Annie isn’t even there. She flirts with Jeff and _Professor Duncan_ all night, before getting swept up with some cool anarchists well into their 30s who eye Annie’s headband mockingly and call her “Anna” all evening. 

Annie slips out without saying goodbye.

No one follows her. 

She plugs her phone into charge in her car (dipped below 41%!) and taps out a text before fully thinking about it. _Want to get a drink? Bad night_

She immediately regrets it. Locks her phone, throws it on the passenger seat. 

Halfway home, the screen lights up:

ANNIE KIM: _yes. where?_

The light turns green. Horns honk. Annie sits motionless. Tail lights and headlights blur in a hazy kaleidoscope. 

She makes a U-turn. 

#

Walking into Greendale Monday morning is not a big deal. Not a big deal at all! she convinces herself. She does not look different. She is not acting different. No one could ever know that she had sex with a girl this weekend. There’s no scarlet letter on her admittedly bright red sweater.

“Annie.”

“Ah! Hi! Nothing!”

Jeff eyes her: obviously weighing if she’s crossed the line on the crazy scale that requires him to intervene. She stares at him, heart pounding. For all his time he spends pretending to text, Annie knows he’s really just scouring Twitter for gossip. If anyone were to know what she did this weekend: it’s Jeff. 

He leans against the wall and smiles knowingly. 

“So about that homework…” He makes finger guns. “Any chance I could get a look at yours?”

Annie’s so relieved that she lets him copy. It’s a ten point assignment, like that’ll do anything to help him anyway. 

The rest of the day progresses swimmingly normal. A teacher has a mild heart attack. A wasp nest is found in the cafeteria. Garrett announces he’s really the mayor’s long lost son. Annie’s so cheerful that she seeks out Britta in the bathroom. “Okay, we _need_ to talk about the dean’s phone bill that he accidentally forwarded to us. I’m worried that he’s being blackmailed —”

Britta whirls around. Holds her phone in Annie’s face. 

A series of increasingly incriminating messages pan down the screen, starting with _GUESS WHERE I AM_ and ending with a blurry photo that nevertheless leaves little to the imagination. 

Annie’s hands have flown to her mouth. Britta’s are clutched at her sides. 

“Anything to say for yourself?”

Annie laughs uncomfortably. “I should _not_ have been driving. Britta, wait— come on— ”

The door catches behind her. In limbo, like the little hope Annie has. 

#

Annie has to watch Britta launch herself back onto Jeff like they’ve been thrown back to _real_ freshman year. She sits so close to Jeff during their D&D all-stakes-in-for-fatherhood game that she’s practically in his lap. And when the school collectively loses their mind over a new social app, she can barely be torn from Jeff’s side. Jeff and Shirley are having a feud about something, so Annie takes Shirely’s side so that things will be balanced. Abed as usual refuses to take sides. 

Shirley shoots Annie worried looks. Maybe Annie’s being a little intense, but this dystopian roleplay is a good distraction. Britta is locked away in the library raging to the masses about inequality in an unflattering grey jumpsuit that is nonetheless driving Annie crazy. 

At least her realization is validated. Nothing like confirmation that you’re a lesbian like being driven to distraction by your crush’s body in a shapeless pair of overalls when a man bulging with muscles is prancing around in a tiny toga. Annie knows intellectually that Jeff must look good, because the dean is trailing after him like a cartoon bear after a freshly baked pie. 

“Honey, it’s Friday night,” Shirley says as they sit around planning the talent show. “Take a break. Go have fun.”

“Not while you’re still here.”

“ _I_ have to humiliate and emasculate Jeff for being an insensitive butthead, but that’s not a two person job. Go on now. There’s someone waiting for you.” 

There is someone, on the other side of the study room door. It’s covered in a sheet, so Annie can only see their outline. But it looks like they’re in a pair of glasses and short skirt, so she has a good idea who it might be.

She leaves through the back door. She’s having that overwhelmed feeling again like in high school — like if someone makes her make one more decision, she’ll explode.

#

The app craze dies down, but fortunately there’s another crisis on its heels. Greendale is going to be sold to Subway, and Annie for one doesn’t care. Britta isn’t ignoring her anymore, but she’s treating her with detached politeness. Like they’re barely friends. They don’t hang out alone anymore. Every time Annie gets a minute alone with her, Britta finds an excuse to dash away. 

Fine. One of them has to be the adult, and as usual it’s Annie: the youngest person in the room. 

She and Abed help the dean pack his office. It’s a job too manual labor-y for Jeff, and Shirley has enough to do closing the sandwich shop. The dean snivels pitifully. At first Annie’s kind of repulsed. Like get a grip: it’s a job and you’re a middle aged man. But then, she’s been moping around like a specter for the last couple of weeks over a girl she made out with a couple of times, so who is she to judge? 

She finds a Gasparilla application shoved in the back of a filing cabinet and asks, “Dean, were you planning on applying this year?”

He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “My acapella choir was going to. But then Dave got cancer and Charlie went through a break up, so guess not! I might get my canasta group to go instead. But who knows after all—” he waves his hand— “this?”

So he does have a life, just one that Annie doesn’t know about. She’s a loser _and_ a dick! How cool.

“The study group is doing it this year,” Abed says, taping up boxes in snowflake mosaics. “You can join ours if you want.”

The dean puts a hand over his heart. “Thank you, Abed.”

Abed isn’t listening anymore. He’s staring at an old photo on the wall of former dean Borchart.

#

They find a treasure map (which is _awesome_ ) to find a trap door (which is _even more awesome_ ) and all Annie can think is how much Troy would’ve loved this. Abed has to be thinking the same thing, but he’s so swept up in the euphoria that it’s hard to tell. 

Shirley locks the teacher’s lounge doors. Hickey has an axe. It’s getting real. Annie feels a thrill in her stomach. This is the part in movies where the protagonist who’s fucked up their romantic storyline makes a big declaration and makes amends. 

But someone else beats her to it. 

Britta announces to the group at large, “Well we’re getting _married_ ,” and grabs Jeff’s hand defiantly: looking straight at Annie.

Jeff looks so damn smug. Annie wants to dig his eyes out. What a patsy! He can’t even tell when he’s being used as some kind of revenge beard? And Britta, who is a grown woman, goes out and jumps into an engagement just to avoid talking about some hurt feelings? 

This is the closest Annie’s ever felt to her old high school breakdown. 

“You two are _ridiculous_ together,” she screams at them. 

And they really are. They deserve each other. 

#

Abed tries to comfort her down in the tunnels below the secret trap door in the teacher’s lounge (a fact she can’t even appreciate!). It’s sweet, if misguided. His and Troy’s relationship is entirely different than this five-car-pileup Annie is currently swerving through: a relationship built on trust and communication and understanding. 

Things that neither Britta nor Annie are great at. 

She wouldn’t be so mad if she didn’t know this was mostly, if not wholly, her fault. 

_Life isn’t a TV show_ , Jeff likes to tell Abed at least once an hour. Maybe Annie is the one that really needs to hear this. 

Some things just don’t work out.

#

This pity party lasts all of two minutes. Seeing that dirty old cokehead crawl out from behind a motherboard shocks Annie back into reality. Like hitting ice cold lake water after your teenage crush pushes you in so that they can make out with a cute boy on the dock. This is what Annie will turn into if she doesn’t loosen her grip on control once in a while: a sad old person squirreled away from the world drowning in dirty hair and unrequited love. 

She gives some kind of speech about giving each other space and loving each other — the dean rolls his eyes possessively, clearly misunderstanding her speech to be about Jeff — but she’s watching Britta. 

Britta is regarding Annie with an inscrutable expression. Annie takes this to mean— whatever, who knows. Maybe Britta has realized that there _are_ benefits to heterosexual relationships. Maybe as much as Britta craves attention and shock-factor stunts, the idea of withstanding constant scrutiny and disapproval in everyday situations is too much. There’s a big difference between onlookers gawking at a protest and a middle aged woman in pearls and a twinset scowling at you in the frozen food aisle as you do the weekly shop. 

And she and Britta aren’t even _together_ , Annie thinks despairingly. Britta is standing the normal distance away. She puts a hand on the back of Annie’s neck, briefly, to shake her a little like a puppy to punctuate some point, but in Mother Goose’s eyes this is clearly evidence of illicit relations. Annie pulls away and throws the pizza bagel rolls in the cart. Britta will forget about them anyway, and it’ll be a nice treat for Abed to find. 

Annie doesn’t ask about any wedding preparations. Neither does Shirley, pointedly. 

#

“It’s that time again, folks,” says Annie, acutely aware of Pierce, Troy, and Shirley missing from the study room table. She does not explain to the old Criminology professor, the narc, and the kind computer genius what she means. “Gasparilla float signup. And we are _not_ waiting until a month before to choose our theme this year. We will be clear. We will be cohesive. We will be—”

“Just tell us the theme, Churchill,” says Jeff without looking up from his phone. Britta is cross-armed and staring pissily at her own: though Annie knows she ran out of data a week ago.

Annie says, “ _Hail Brittania_.”

Jeff’s head snaps up. 

So does Britta’s. “You can’t expect us to uphold a genocidal colonizing government spearheaded by em entrenched classist—”

“Britta,” Jeff interrupts quietly. “Brittania. _Britta_ -nia.”

“ _I_ know!” she says, then pauses. “Wait.” Her eyes fly to meet Annie’s. 

Then she nods: not smiling but visibly less angry. Gesture received. 

“Does everything,” asks the narc, “spoken aloud in this room have to have three layers of significance?”

Professor Hickey pats her shoulder awkwardly. “I’ll make you a cheat sheet.”

#

Britta loses her job and her apartment. She moves in with Annie and Abed over the summer. Annie protests this forcefully, but Abed overrules this with the simple logic of: _We’re broke._

And it’s okay. It really is. Annie thought it would be awkward, but it’s fine. They’re on opposite schedules — Annie up at 7am for yoga, and Britta not cooking dinner until midnight — and somehow in the meantime they manage a cordial entente. Chatting about their days. Bickering about chores. Doing the 9pm Walmart run when they realize collectively that the toilet paper is gone and nobody has paid attention to Annie’s chore chart.

She and Abed meet Britta’s parents officially. And then they discover what Britta’s childhood — absent parents, neglected, raised herself before dropping out at sixteen to get a job and sublease — really meant. Annie’s getting better at not being so naive, but every so often she still gets little shocks. 

Things feel better between them after that. Annie tells Britta more about her various childhood psychiatrists, and Britta tells Annie about her various coping techniques (drugs, men, drama), of which she’s trying to wean herself off. Annie does not tell her about her big gay revelation, but drops casually in a conversation, _back when I thought I still liked men_ , and Britta looks at her sharply but lets it slide. Frankie brings her girlfriend over for Halloween, and Annie realizes that it’s just Not a Big Deal. It’s taken her six years to fully extricate herself from her parents’ expectations for a career, marriage, and lifestyle but maybe that’s what growing up is: little disappointments doled out to those you love in small enough doses that they can eventually digest. 

#

Garrett, a twenty-two year old, is having a wedding. Frankie comes over and the girls all Get Ready together. Painting nails, doing hair, drinking, gossiping. Annie blacks out and actually doesn’t remember any of the wedding: but she does remember the pregame part. Britta showing Frankie around _their_ home, knowing where Annie keeps the brand-name cleaning products, painting Annie’s toenails shakily with one hand while clutching an old fashioned in the other. 

“Wouldn’t you rather have a margarita?” Frankie asks, watching this laborious process. “The stem is easier to hold.”

“Presentation is everything, Frances,” says Britta. 

#

Britta walks around the apartment in a big t-shirt and no bra underneath, which is torturous. Annie retaliates by wearing spaghetti-straps and bike shorts. (Abed says nothing, but starts wearing sunglasses around the house. He claims it’s for a Tarantino bit.)

Every night Annie pauses by Britta’s sofa bed and says, “Good night.”

Britta looks up from her tangle of sheets strewn with paperbacks, extra clothes, and usually a laptop. She’s usually in reading glasses at night: the late shows reflecting off the lenses. She falls asleep to background TV like Annie falls asleep to the conversation between her humidifier and ceiling fan. “Night.”

They stare at each other a minute more — and then every night, as no one says anything more, Annie’s door shuts.

#

There’s two schools of thought surrounding the origins of Greendale Gasparilla. One legend is that it has always been a part of the neighborhood canon; started small by a group of tipsy friends parading down the street one dawn as the close of a rowdy night out at a costume party and then carried on throughout the years, growing in size and notoriety.

The other strand in this oral storytelling weaving is that the owner of a local hardware store went to visit his sister in Tampa, FL one winter and vibed so heavily with their nautical nonsense that upon return to Colorado, started quietly advertising for the “Greendale Gasparilla Parade” on the communal bulletin board outside his shop. When people assumed this was a longstanding tradition that just hadn’t gained much press traction yet, he didn’t think it polite to correct them.

But that’s just one theory.

Gasparilla day dawns bright and sunny. You couldn’t ask for a better festival setting. The perfect end — and natural finale — to a transformative year. Annie throws open her curtains, breathes in the spring air. The sky opens into torrential rain. 

The downpour does not let up for a single minute. Nor do Gasparilla’s Twitter updates of _PARADE IS ON, RAIN OR SHINE!_ The Boulder chapter of the Alliance Française tweets _IT’S TIME TO GET MESSY MSSRS._ Annie juggles texts from every single study group member before making a group chat once and for all and refusing to answer any DMs.

Their float is: 90% crepe paper hanging off the side of Ben Chang’s pickup track and 10% sexy versions of the British monarchy. Jeff naturally claimed Prince Charles. The dean, hilariously, insisted on Camilla Parker-Bowles, although the way Jeff eyes him throughout the parade makes Annie think it was more strategic than any of them realized. Jeff looks eagerly for Annie’s Queen Elizabeth getup as she climbs out of her car. She watches his face fall, comically, when Abed, in powdered hair, skirt suit, broach, and lipstick sidles up to him instead. 

Jeff shrugs, grins, and holds out his arm to Abed. “Your majesty.”

“Your grace!” chips Abed, and they totter away. 

The crowd — rowdy spring breakers and middle aged divorcés desperate for second youth — are unfazed by the rain. Drinks and mardi gras beads are thrown around indiscriminately. The rain washes away half of their makeup by mile two. But there’s something for thousands of people raising their arms and cheering at you. Speakers on floats surround them with pounding music. It’s like a midday club. 

Abed leans toward her. “This is what Pride always looks like in movies.”

Annie looks at him. Abed’s so much more observant that people give him credit for.

“Have you ever been?”

“Nope. But I always wanted to. I was worried my dad would recognize me.”

Annie doesn’t realize it until she says it aloud: “Same.”

Their “float” is just a portable metal ballet barre anchored to the floor of Chang’s truck bed, which they decorated with a flower wall, steamers, and flags. They’re standing three to a side — backs to the barre — so Annie doesn’t even see Britta until a rogue traffic light bisects the parade procession in two. 

Britta leans around the barre. She’s grinning in a _here’s Johnny_ way. The crowd on Annie’s side shrieks: she’s dressed as a Margaret Thatcher — zombie? “If the IRA succeeded in assassinating her,” Britta explains proudly. 

Maybe it’s the rain, or the atmosphere, or the fact that half Britta’s zombie makeup is sliding off her face — but Annie gets the giggles so badly she gets a stitch in her side. 

Britta says, “Don’t cry, Bloody Mary,” and kisses her. 

Horns honk behind them, but Chang’s truck is stalling in the rain. These old downtown streets have bad drainage: some of the floats are quite literally floating down the street.

Annie clutches on to Britta’s hands. Her hair is plastered across her face. “Can I tell you a secret?”

The truck roars to life. They jerk forwards to catch up with the parade. Annie clutches onto the barre. The rest of their conversation is screamed over their shoulders. 

“Washington? _D.C?”_

“Just for the summer!”

“Yeah, but if they offer you a full time job at the end?”

“Then I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!”

There’s a break in the music. The speaker on the float in front of them is skipping on a disco track: _burn-burn-burn-burn._

Annie leans back against the barre. She can feel Britta leaning back against the other side. “You should—”

The disco music roars back to life. The crowd surges back to their feet. Beside her, Jeff is dancing so energetically that the dean looks bland by comparison. 

#

Britta has the cable on one of those late night talk shows she always has on. Annie can never tell the hosts apart: unfunny WASP men. She’s never paid for cable before living with Abed, and doubts she will again. She’ll miss the sound of canned background laughter that comes with Abed being home, and talk-news-radio that comes from living with Britta.

Annie towels off her hair and perches on the edge of the couch. Britta’s got it pulled out in bed form: arms above her head, reading glasses on, her old _Save the pelicans_ t-shirt slipping off her shoulder. It’s the flicking blue light that makes Annie homesick for a place she hasn’t left yet. 

Britta props her head up in an arm. “You’re really leaving in a week?” 

“Looks that way.” Annie fiddles with the sash of her robe. “What are you going to do about the apartment?”

“Dunno. Find some Craigslist roommates probably.” Britta makes a face: “Maybe move in with my parents for a minute until I’m back on my feet.”

She thinks of the last six years. Of the person who’s always been there for her: who’s helped her grow and change the most. Her narrative foil, as Abed would say. 

Annie says, “Why don’t you spend the summer in DC?”

Britta scoffs. “Come _on_.”

“What, there’s no bars there? I bet bartenders make way more in tips. Think of all those senators with stripper money just falling out of their pockets.”

Britta’s eyeing her warily. Like a stray cat weighing its chances of coming out from behind a GameStop. “You have to tell me if you’re doing a bit. I can’t tell anymore. You and Abed have gotten way too good.”

Annie sits up on her knees. Takes Britta’s hands in hers. She’s being cheesy and dramatic, but god forgive her, that shit _works_ on Britta. What on earth is she getting into. 

“I’m _100_ % serious. What stuff do you have here that you couldn’t just abandon? How many of your stories start with ‘all my belongings can fit into a backpack’?”

Britta’s smile fades. “Those stories are from when I was eighteen. You want me to move across the country with an Associates’ degree and a girl who could ditch me at any minute?”

Annie’s heart catches. She says carefully, “I don’t think she could do any better than you.”

Britta’s gaze flicks up. She pulls her hands away and curls under the covers. “I’ll think about it.”

Annie goes back to her room: at least her room for the next seven days. She’s already got half her things in boxes — a third to donate, a third to keep, the rest to storage (i.e. Shirley’s mother’s basement). They’ve got a deal worked out that if Annie doesn’t return, Shirley can sell everything at her church bazaar. 

_You really think you won’t come back?_ Shirley asked when they talked on the phone last week. _Even the boys and I are planning on returning next year. They hate the heat. And miss the mountains._

_Until they get used to it,_ Annie said. 

It would have been nice to tie off things neatly with a bow. Annie turns over on her side, sliding her arm under the pillow. She still sleeps on the left, ever since Britta used the right. Sleeping across the whole bed feels wrong now. 

But she’s done trying to control things.

Whether Britta comes to DC or not, there will be other women, waiting in the foggy horizon of Annie’s future. She dreams of a conveyor belt at the airport, waiting amongst the flotsam of unfamiliar luggage beneath stark fluorescent lighting that turns into an office when she looks up again, walking down the hallway in purposefully into a conference room where everyone is waiting expectantly and as she opens her mouth to speak she’s dreaming of her own little studio apartment where it’s unclear if anyone lives there with her but it has the feeling of _home_ with tangled sheets, which Annie extricates her legs from now, as the morning sun stabs through the broken blinds of her bedroom window and the sounds of Abed puttering around the kitchen waft through the uneven fixture of her door.

_at the airport_

Annie walks inside the doors, in tandem with Abed, who immediately ditches her for the Maoz stand. _See you on Facetime for Columbo Sundays!_ he calls over his shoulder.

Annie feels a hand slide across her back. Turning to kiss Britta hello seems entirely natural — but she stops herself just in time. 

“Jeff kissed me goodbye,” says Annie.

Britta rolls her eyes. “Me too. He thinks he’s the main character in everyone’s life.”

“Honestly we’re just lucky it was Troy who got into a cult and not him.”

Britta does kiss her hello then. A cleanser: it feels like they’ve finally whisked Jeff out of the picture. Kiss the princess, end the story. They move toward the gate together, stopping briefly for Britta to paw around for her passport, until Annie reminds her it’s a domestic flight. But she still has to ditch some leftover weed she found in the side pocket of her backpack, which she does by gifting it to a stressed teenager lugging a cello case toward the pickup lane. 

“Good luck!” she shouts after him. “He’s probably going to an audition, right?” she adds to Annie. 

“Probably,” says Annie.

“No, we should get food here. It gets more expensive the further into airports you go. Like a cash maze. Also wait to fill up your water bottle until we’re at the gate. But for real,” says Britta, buying them Starbucks with the last $20 on a going away gift card ( _“You can’t move somewhere new with leftover money, that’s just common sense”),_ “That’s an HBO special I would definitely watch. Think the FBI has some kind of employee discount?”

“For interns?” says Annie, looping her hand through Britta’s. “I doubt it.”

**Author's Note:**

> call this my fix it for the absolutely travesty of a finale given to an otherwise iconic cast
> 
> [tumblr link](https://sonatine.tumblr.com/post/636696561703927808/hail-brittania)


End file.
